


The time Daniel Sousa met Sasquatch (and the time Jack sort of did)

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, idk man, tough shit thompson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8400199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: No, really.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keysburg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysburg/gifts).



**Somewhere near Arcata, California, 1949**

They were well and truly stuck this time, and it was _not_ Daniel’s fault—okay, it might have been just a little bit his fault since he was driving, but Peggy was the one who had looked at the steep, muddy slope ahead of them and told him to floor it; the car would make it over. Which he did. And it did not.

“Try it again,” Peggy had urged. “We’re losing them.” Somewhere further up along the road was a pair of Soviet operatives that had rather rudely interrupted their honeymoon in the redwoods. The hot pursuit had slowed to a crawl once the operatives had pulled off from the main highway and led them several miles down a winding dirt (mud) road that wasn’t even on the map.

And Daniel had known it was a bad idea to follow, just as he had also known that if he didn’t make it over the hill the first time, the second attempt probably wasn’t going to work either. But he couldn’t say no to his brand-new wife, so he obliged her by backing up, hitting the gas pedal, and getting the car thoroughly stuck. The tires spun out, spraying mud everywhere.

Peggy jumped out from the passenger seat to take a look. “Perhaps we can dig it out?” she suggested as she walked around to his side.

“You pack a shovel in your luggage?” Daniel asked.

She rolled her eyes at him and stepped back as he opened the car door. Her heels squelched noisily in the mud. “Maybe if we had a long stick, though…”

He saw her eyeing his crutch in the backseat. “No.”

“I didn’t even—”

“You were thinking it,” he said dryly as he opened the car door. Despite taking care while getting out of the car, Daniel’s crutch went one way and his legs went the other, and he would have slipped if Peggy hadn’t caught him by the elbow. “Thanks,” he said, flushing as he steadied himself against her. This was off to a real promising start.

It was also evident that there was no way they would be able to dig the car out between the two of them; it was stuck too deep. Besides, the sun was starting to set. “I think we need to go for help,” Daniel said reluctantly.

He knew exactly what Peggy was going to say to that. “I’ll go,” she declared. “You should wait here. No, don’t argue with me.”

“I can make it,” he insisted, hating the thought of Peggy trekking out of the woods alone while he sat in the car and waited to be rescued. He took a couple steps forward and that time he really did go down hard on his ass, which was excellent and just what he needed right now.

She helped him up and practically pushed him back into the driver’s seat, mud and all. “ _Daniel_ ,” she said in a tone that really, truly allowed for no further opposition.

“Fine,” he snapped back. He settled in for a good long sulk as he watched her walk away, even though he knew she was probably right that a steep, muddy road in the dark would be a no-go on one leg. He figured the Soviet operatives they had been chasing were long gone, but at least he and Peggy were both armed and had flashlights. Still, this was not what he had in mind for their honeymoon. (On the other hand, he _had_ just married Peggy Carter, so he’d kind of known what he was signing up for.)

Daniel sighed and leaned back into the seat. It was cool under the canopy of the redwoods already, and once the sun went down it would be chilly. He regretted not giving Peggy his jacket. He checked his watch and yawned, trying to decide what was an appropriate amount of time to wait before going after her, mud or no mud…

…And then he blinked and sat up, rubbing his eyes. It was almost pitch black outside and eerily silent. He wondered how long he had fallen asleep for. _Pretty sloppy, Sousa_.

He switched on the flashlight and froze. Some thirty feet away, he saw a pair of eyes glowing green in the light, hovering almost eight feet off the ground. Hardly daring to breathe, he aimed his flashlight carefully at the eyes.

They vanished. Daniel hurriedly reached for his gun but he was too slow; he didn’t even have it out of the holster before the creature was bending down just outside the car window, staring at him. It fogged up the glass as it exhaled. And Daniel, who had faced down death dozens of times on the battlefield, who had gone up against Dottie Underwood and lived, who had unhesitatingly walked into an incomprehensible rift in space and time—Daniel stared right back. There was something ancient about those eyes; something clearly not human but certainly intelligent. Maybe even a little amused. He slowly relaxed his hold on his gun, which he suspected wouldn’t do much for him other than make the creature mad.

The creature straightened to its full height and made a series of clicking noises. Daniel whipped his head around to see a second creature standing on the other side of the car, slightly smaller than the first. He hadn’t even heard it approach. Moments later, a third one joined them, coming around to the front of the car and watching him curiously through the windshield. They clicked at each other for a minute or so before appearing to reach some sort of agreement. Daniel hoped it didn't involve eating him.

Without further warning, the three creatures bent down and raised the car out of the mud, pushing it back down the slope onto a slightly firmer patch of ground before turning it around so it faced the direction it had come from. “Whoa!” Daniel exclaimed as he grabbed on to the seat to keep his balance. It took him a moment to regain his composure once they put the car down.

The first creature clicked again and pointed one massive finger at Daniel and then at the road. He nodded. “Thanks,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition. This time, with a little extra push from the back, the car was actually able to move forward. He gave the creatures a wave, and all three waved back before melting away into the woods.

Daniel took the road slowly so he could keep an eye out for Peggy. He  wondered if she had encountered the creatures too. He really hoped she hadn’t tried to punch one if she had—she might be able to KO Jack Thompson with a single blow, but these creatures were quite a bit bigger. (Though they were better company than Thompson, come to think of it.)

Somewhere off in the distance ahead of him, he heard a gunshot. _Oh good, she tried to shoot one_. He pressed down a little harder on the gas pedal and prayed he wouldn’t get the car stuck again as the car picked up speed.

Daniel breathed a sigh of relief when he finally spotted Peggy not far from the intersection with the main road. She wasn’t alone: the two operatives they had been chasing earlier were sitting in the mud, handcuffed together. “It’s about time you got here,” she snapped at him. It was evident that she had also slipped a few times: her face, shirt, and pants were all streaked with mud. “Oh, hush,” she said absently to the operatives, who were talking to each other rapidly in Russian. They sounded completely terrified and kept turning their heads to look over their shoulders. “These two came screaming out of the woods, babbling some nonsense about monsters. They didn’t even put up a good fight,” Peggy shrugged.

“Uh…huh,” Daniel said as he got out of the car, minding his footing as he came around to the other side. He cast an eye around for the creatures, but he had a feeling that he wouldn’t see them unless they wanted to be seen. “You didn’t fire that shot?”

She frowned. “I thought you did that. And how on earth did you get the car out of the mud by yourself?”

“Oh, you know. Monsters,” he said, casting his flashlight around until a glint of metal caught his attention. He limped over to it.

“Really, Daniel, I have neither the time nor the patience right now for—oh. Oh,” she said as he held up the handgun that one of the operatives had apparently dropped. The barrel was twisted upwards at a nearly ninety degree angle.

He nudged one of the operatives with the tip of his crutch, and the man flinched as though he’d seen a ghost. Or a hairy eight-foot-tall definitely not-human. “Let’s put our friends in the back seat. There’s a nice dry cell waiting for them in Arcata.”

“Right,” Peggy said faintly as they dragged the suspects into the car, which was now muddy both inside and out. “I require a full explanation for all this later, Chief Sousa.”

“Sure thing,” he said, though he figured the official report would require some creative wording.

As they turned onto the main road, he snuck a glance at Peggy slouching down in the passenger seat. She had a big muddy smear on her forehead and cheek, her hair was a mess, her new blouse was now much more brown than beige, and she was absolutely, stunningly beautiful. It was still hard to believe he was actually married to this woman.

She caught him watching her. “What?” she asked irritably.

“So…you brought handcuffs on our honeymoon?”

Even in the dark, he knew Peggy was blushing bright red. “Um,” she explained. “I keep a couple pairs in my purse. Just in case.”

Daniel grinned. “Kinky, Peg. Didn’t know you were into that.”

She gave him a small shove. “Wanker.”

“Yours, though,” Daniel laughed as he pulled up outside the police station. He leaned over and kissed her, mud and all. If his honeymoon was going to consist of chasing down Soviet spies and having strange encounters with mysterious nonhuman creatures in the woods, there was only one woman he wanted to spend it with, and she was right here beside him.

* * *

**Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1947**

The Santa Fe pizza was not doing well in Jack’s stomach, despite being a significant notch above what passed for pizza in Los Angeles. (In fairness, letting Sousa place the order had been his own mistake: the…food—he refused to dignify it by calling it pizza—had arrived with avocado and some sort of leafy green vegetable on top. Even worse, the cheese was clearly not mozzarella. And Sousa, who claimed to be from Manhattan, had taken a bite and declared it “not bad.” That was how Jack knew the man had truly lost his mind.)

So he stretched, went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and returned to bed. He tossed and turned for another half hour before finally drifting to sleep.

***

He found himself sitting in a booth in his favorite dive in all of New York. The pizza in front of him was enormous and the most perfect thing he had ever laid eyes on—layers and layers of mozzarella, the crust just slightly burnt, the aroma making him salivate. He grabbed a massive slice, folded it in half, opened his mouth to take a bite, and then stopped.

Crammed into the booth across from him was this huge hairy _thing_ , watching him with beady eyes. Jack estimated it had to be at least eight feet tall standing. It was wearing a goddamn Dodgers cap. As he gawked, the thing picked up the rest of the pizza—Jack’s pizza—and ate it in five bites. It licked its fingers, each one as big around as Jack’s wrist, and met his stare. “The fuck you looking at?” it asked in an accent that was pure Lower East Side.

“That's not fair,” Jack groaned, even though he probably had done something or other to deserve it. He could always find new and novel ways to fuck things up.

“Tough shit, Thompson,” the thing said unsympathetically. “Get your act together.” Adding insult to injury, it yanked the slice of Jack’s pizza from his hand and shoved it in its mouth, leaving him holding just the crust. It chewed and swallowed without breaking its gaze. Then, it reached forward and patted Jack on the head with a gigantic, pizza grease-covered hand. It bared its teeth and made a low rumbling sound, and Jack realized the thing was actually laughing at him.

***

Jack woke up covered in sweat, his stomach aching even worse than before. There was no going back to sleep after that. As he fumbled around in the dark for his clothes, he made himself a promise: he didn’t know how long it would be until he was finally home, but he sure as hell wasn’t touching another fucking slice of pizza until he made it back to New York.

**Author's Note:**

> Having spent a few months living in rural norcal, I can confirm that it is prime sasquatch territory.
> 
> If you're so inclined, check out this article from The Atlantic about the prevalence of Sasquatch myths across cultures: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/sasquatch/505304/


End file.
